“K. For Kaitlin,” she told him.
He shook his head again. “How unusual.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing. Really.” He smiled cheerfully.
“Is there some problem?”
“Problem? No! Well, let’s see, we’ll try cabin A,” he told her.
He moved along the narrow hallway and opened a door. The cabin was empty, and he smiled broadly. “A it is!”
“Was there something wrong with my reservation?” Kaitlin asked him.
“No. Come on in, and I’ll show you the cabin. This sleeping car is one of our newest.”
He said it with such pride that Kaitlin didn’t dare comment on the very tiny size of the room.
“That’s the top bunk up there, folded into the wall. And there’s plenty of storage space above it. The seats are pulled down—I’ll make up the bed for you tonight—and there’s your sink.” She could see the sink. It was only a foot away from the seat. Once the bunk was down, she realized, she’d have to kneel on the mattress in order to brush her teeth.
She pointed to a door. “Is that the bathroom?”
“Oh, no, that leads to another cabin. These are really wonderful cars. Each cabin can sleep two, so if a family is traveling together, the door between the two can be opened, and the kids can run back and forth.”
They would have to be very tiny kids, Kaitlin decided, if they were going to run anywhere between these cabins. No bigger than dolls.
“The bathroom,” he told her with pride, “is right here, behind the sink.”
The bathroom…
There was a fiberglass toilet in a space that seemed to be two feet by two feet at the most. The shower head was in the wall. To use it, the toilet seat needed to be closed, and the water would just spray around the entire cubicle.
Well, she had wanted small and cozy. This was certainly that.
She smiled. “Thanks. I think I see where everything is, all right.”
He grinned. “Great. If you need me, give a holler. I’m here to serve you.”
She nodded and thanked him again. As he left, the train began to pull away from the station.
She heard thudding in the cabin connected to hers. Apparently her neighbor had arrived even later than she had.
She decided to settle in. She had hours and hours before they crossed the Georgia border.
She unpacked her toiletries, then took another look in the bathroom. It was so small that it made her shudder. She wondered what a larger person would do in such a space.
Well, it wasn’t quite home, she thought a few minutes later, but everything was in its place and her suitcases were stowed away. She took off her shoes, curled up on the seat by the window and brought out a mystery novel by one of her favorite authors, a book she had been saving especially for this occasion.
She tried to read, but the first pages didn’t seem to make sense. She read them over, then she realized that she was thinking about Brendan.
She leaned back and closed her eyes.
She would see Brendan again very soon, in two days. His secretary had called Janis to arrange a lunch meeting for them at the hall where they were having the party. They would go over the menu and check the seating arrangements. And they’d be together at the dinner, of course.
Then she wouldn’t really need to see him again for a while. Barbara was having a standard shower, and Joe was having an all-male bachelor party. After this trip, weeks could go by before she had to see him again.
She didn’t know whether she was relieved or anxious.
She set her book down, keeping her eyes closed. The motion of the train was gentle and soothing, and she drifted to sleep.
When she awoke she was amazed to discover that it was already dark outside. She glanced at her watch. It was almost six; she had slept for nearly eight hours. In a ridiculous position on the tiny seat. Her neck was cramped, and she was stiff and miserable. And hungry.
With a sigh she rose and stretched, then stumbled the fifteen inches to the tiny sink. She washed her face and combed out her hair, and decided that dinner seemed like a good idea. She had noticed that the dining car was forward when she boarded the train, so she walked that way, passing through another car of sleepers and one of seats.
There was a buffet line, and she joined it, then had to choose between chicken, fish and beef for the entrée. She decided on the breaded chicken and iced tea, then followed the attendant, who carried her tray along a line of tables.
She saw only the top of his head at first, yet even then, she felt little prickles along her skin. The attendant was still walking, but she was standing still in the aisle.
Then he raised his head. There was no mistaking him. Brendan was on the train. Sitting at a booth, sipping coffee and reading a newsmagazine. And now…
And now he was staring at her. He didn’t smile, and he definitely looked surprised to see her.
Someone bumped into her from behind as the train jolted. She almost toppled over, but Brendan was instantly on his feet and down the aisle, catching her before she could fall.
It was another one of the waiters behind her, a sweet little man who began to apologize profusely. Kaitlin assured him that it was all right, all the while staring at Brendan.
“Let’s sit down before this gets any worse, shall we?” he murmured, leading her to the booth where he had been sitting. Her food seemed to be long gone.
“What are you doing on this train?” she demanded, more sharply than she had intended. She winced inwardly. Why couldn’t she be nice?
“Kaitlin, there are two trains a day out of Miami, one in the morning, one at night. This train was the only one I could take!”
“You should have taken an airplane!” she accused him.
“You could have flown,” he reminded her.
“I hate to fly.”
“You’re terrified of flying.”
“No, I’m not. I just hate to do it,” she lied. “And I do fly.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about the way you fly,” he informed her, frowning. “Inebriated into insensibility. Barely conscious,” he commented.
“That’s why you should have flown!” she informed him.
He arched a brow. “I like trains, Kaitlin. I work on the train. I read on the train. I look at the countryside, and I even enjoy the seedy side of the landscape. And the last I heard, this is a free country, so why the hell can’t I take a train if I so choose? Are you that afraid of me?”
“I’m not afraid of you!”
“Can’t stay away from me, huh? Afraid you’ll wind up sleeping with me because there won’t be anywhere for you to run once you start things?”
“I am not going to sleep with you!” she exclaimed, far more loudly than she realized.
There was a crashing sound beside her. She looked over to realize that her attendant and the waiter who had bumped into her were both standing beside the table, one to bring a complimentary glass of wine, the other, who had found her at last, to deliver her dinner tray. Only he had dropped her tray, his face reddening, when he overheard their conversation.
She realized then that she must have spoken very loudly, because the diners around them were staring at her, too.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Brendan told her.
She wanted to throttle him or, at the very least, dump the wine over his head. She gritted her teeth while the first waiter assured her that he’d be back with her dinner in just a minute. “I—I had lost you,” he explained, picking up the remnants of the chicken from the aisle. She smiled sickly. Then the wine was set down, and both men hurried away.
Her fellow passengers, however, continued to stare for several seconds.
Brendan was smiling. “Want to leave?”
“With my tail between my legs? No, thanks,” she assured him. There was still one pinched-faced lady staring at her. Kaitlin couldn’t help herself. She gripped Brendan’s hand passionately and leaned toward him. “All right,
I will sleep with you again.”
“Right here?”
“Have we got the space?”
“I guess not.”
“We’ll just have to wait.”
The woman rose, wide-eyed. Brendan gave her a wink, and she huffed. Then he laughed, and Kaitlin found that she was smiling. “She’s probably thinking that the trains really are filled with derelicts these days,” he assured her.
She flushed. Her tray of food arrived, and she toyed with it idly, feeling his gaze. “It was all your fault,” she told him.
“Mine?”
“For being on the train. I would never have stopped dead still if I hadn’t seen you. And then the man wouldn’t have rushed into me. And the other waiter wouldn’t have lost me.”
“I see. I’m guilty of existing.”
She made a face and pushed her tray away. “You really should fly.”
His lashes were heavy over his eyes as he leaned back, watching her. “So should you. It saves time.” And then to her surprise, he rose. “I’ll let you dine in peace, Ms. O’Herlihy.” But he paused next to her and whispered softly, “Since you won’t sleep with me here and now. Too bad. You had me all excited.”
She spun around, but he was already starting down the aisle.
She stared at her food for a minute, decided that she wasn’t hungry after all, then stood and left the waiter a tip. She started down the hallway, passed through the other cars to hers, where she stared at the letters on the cabin doors. The attendant had been in to pull down the bunks, and the drapes were pulled over the windows in the doors.
She came to cabin AA and opened it. The door slammed into something, and she shoved at it, certain that her luggage must have gotten in the way.
“Hey!” came an aggrieved voice. The door swung open, and she almost fell in.
Brendan was there. He was shirtless, taking up all the space between the lowered bunk and the sink. He glowered at her. “What are you doing?”
“This—this is my cabin.”
“Sorry, it’s mine.”
She pointed to the letter on the door. “Brendan, I know it’s my cabin.”
“No, Kaitlin, it’s mine.” A woman was coming down the narrow hall. Kaitlin had to get out of her way, so she moved into the cabin, almost on top of him. He backed away from the door to give her room. Then he sighed with exasperation and drew her all the way in. He flicked a bolt on the door connecting his cabin to the one next door, opened it and thrust her through. She saw her belongings.
“You’re cabin A—not AA,” he told her, then turned, returning to the sink.
He hadn’t closed the door. She followed him the three steps in. “Well, I’m sorry. Very sorry.”
His head clunked into the medicine cabinet as he started to raise his face from the water. He hadn’t quite been able to get his body bent into the space to begin with. He looked so angry that she thought he was going to start to growl.
He slammed his hands on the sink. “Sorry. How nice. You know, Kaitlin, I’ve never heard you say you were sorry about anything before.”
“I haven’t had anything to be sorry about!” she flared, swinging around and slamming the door between them. She took the two steps to her own sink, determined to brush her teeth, wash her face and curl up with her book again. She could—and would—forget that he was there next to her.
But the connecting door slammed open again, and he was standing there, legs spread, bare chested, his hair damp, his eyes glittering. “Because everything was always my fault, right, Kaitlin?”
She turned. He was walking toward her, and she was trapped in the tiny space between the bunk and the sink.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“I never filed papers against you!” he rasped out furiously.
She gasped, then fell silent for a moment. He had never protested, never tried to contact her, never said a word.
Not until this moment had she realized that their divorce had meant anything to him at all.
“You—you left me!” she whispered.
“I joined the Navy,” he said more quietly. “Because I thought you wanted more out of life than I could give you.”
“I did want more. But I wanted it from you,” she said.
He was standing at least a foot away. She could see the rise and fall of his chest, the damp sprinkles of water upon it, the rippling of the muscles there. He lifted his hands. “All that we had,” he murmured. “All that we had, and we could never talk.”
Tears were rising behind her eyelids, dampening her lashes. She gritted her teeth to keep the tears from falling.
He turned, starting to go to his own cabin. “Well, it’s too late for this now, isn’t it?” he murmured softly. “Good night, Kaitlin.”
He disappeared through the door and closed it behind him. She stared at it for a moment, her hands on her hips. Then she strode toward it and flung it open. He had just stripped off his jeans and was standing by the bunk in his briefs. She paused for a moment, staring at him, then she inhaled sharply and stared into his eyes.
“You didn’t even come home when I lost the baby!” she flared.
“I didn’t know!” he snapped.
“You had to know. I wrote to you—”
“And I was already on a ship. Kaitlin, it was the Navy, not a joyride!” He was walking toward her. She had to retreat. She needed time to assimilate the things they were saying. She spun, but he caught her arm and turned her back. He ran his free hand through his hair. “Kaitlin, damn it, you know I would have come if I had known!”
She tried desperately to free herself. He released her, and she crashed into the door to the bath and fell on the commode, bringing him with her. Then the door slammed shut on them both. They might have been a pair of sardines caught in a too-small can.
Brendan swore, finding it impossible even to turn around. Kaitlin, caught beneath him, tried to catch hold of something and rise.
Her fingers closed over the rubber shower arm, and suddenly water was spraying all over them.
“Damnation, Kaitlin—” He managed to shut off the water, then find the catch on the door. When he swung it open, he turned for her, pulling her over the step, soaked and sodden, in his arms.
They both started to laugh. Her skirt was plastered against her body, and her hair was slicked against her head. She was touching him, and she could feel the dampness of his briefs—the heat beneath them.
Then their laughter faded. Suddenly they were staring at one another. Emotions simmered, seeming to rise like steam between them.
Kaitlin started to tremble and tried to pull away, but Brendan’s hands were tight on her arms, and he held her flush against him. She went still as, slowly, slowly, his head descended toward hers. His lips, hot and wet, moved over hers, and his tongue invaded her mouth, all of him warm and wet and assertive. The fingers of his right hand tangled into her damp hair as his left hand pressed into the small of her back, bringing her more tightly against him. As he freely tasted her mouth, the resistance within her faded. He stroked both hands down the length of her back, cupped her buttocks and brought her up high against the rising steel of his desire.
He kissed her until she knew that she had no strength within her, until she was weak from the wonder and intimacy of his body against hers. Her clothes and his briefs seemed to offer no real barrier between them. And he was still kissing her. Finding her lips, playing his tongue over her earlobe, her throat, her cheeks, her lips. Licking, taunting, probing the deep recesses of her mouth.
Then he pulled away, holding her cheeks, studying her eyes. She knew that her lips were wet and swollen, that her expression was dazed, and he smiled slowly, and with pain.
“I can’t seduce you,” he whispered.
“No,” she agreed.
“And you’re not going to sleep with me on the train.”
“That’s what I said I’d do,” she murmured.
“But then again, you were going to have sex with me right on the d
ining room table.”
“Between the rolls and the wine,” she agreed, her whisper swallowed up by his soft kiss. Then the teasing quality left his voice, and he told her, “I can’t just date you, Kaitlin. I thought that was what we needed, at first. But just like I can’t change the pain of the past, I can’t change the intimacy of it. I can’t pretend that you were never mine, or that I don’t want you now. I don’t expect you to swear away your life to me. I don’t want promises, or a commitment. But I do need honesty.”
She didn’t quite understand what he was saying to her. It could have been so easy. He had just kissed her, and their passion had risen and soared. They could have followed through to the natural conclusion without awkwardness, without a word being exchanged. And she knew that he still wanted her, desperately. She could feel the pulse and the heat of his wanting. Feel it make her want him in return…
She shook her head slightly and dampened her lips. “What do you want from me, Brendan? I can’t make the years disappear, either. You say you don’t want promises, but what promises could we give one another, anyway? I can’t erase the pain either. And I…”
“And you what?” he demanded, his green gaze fierce as he stared at her.
“I can’t just date you, either, I suppose. I don’t know. I don’t…” She shook her head. “What do you want?” she whispered.
And he told her. He leaned down, his lips against her ear, his whisper soft and yet searing. And his thumb trailed down her spine, and he drew her close once again.
“I want you to want me,” he told her. “No repercussions, no running away in the morning. I just want you to want me.”
She met his eyes again and smiled very slowly. She reached up, wrapping her arms around him, pulling his lips to hers. And she kissed him with an ardor to match his, tasting his lips with her tongue, fusing them sweetly together in an ardent dance of desire. Then she spoke against his lips, her lashes heavy against her eyes. “I wanted you at my house that night. When you left.”
“The night when you didn’t even know that we hadn’t made love when it was all over?” he whispered, and she flushed. He shook his head. “I promised you that you’d remember,” he said softly. “Tell me you want me now.”
Wedding Bell Blues Page 14
